I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) (24 page)

It took the enormous, cassocked priest some
maneuvering to free himself from the confines of the confessional
booth. He stepped into a deserted nave and opened the door to the
other side of the confessional.

It was bare save for the kneeler and the
cross above the screen.

The priest looked about his church. The
votive candles flickered on their platform. Light shone over the
pews from the clerestory. And Christ looked down on him from His
cross.

Mark heard one of the solid wooden doors to
the street close in the vestibule.

What had Boone gotten himself into?

DeAndre Watkins didn’t come out of his
apartment much unless it was to go to school. Wasn’t safe where he
lived. Especially when momma was at work. Momma telling him and
Terry to stay in the house when she wasn’t home, steer clear of the
rude boys and those poor people.
Those
poor
people
, the way his momma put it, referring to the fiends
looking to score out in the quad. She didn’t mean their
socio-economic status either. She meant their moral state.

And DeAndre usually listened to his momma,
usually stayed in the apartment when she was at work. Usually sat
on his bed with whatever it was he was reading, which these days
was the second book in Jablonsky’s trilogy.

But his brother’s friend—that sloppy, fat
Ronald—had eaten all their Chinese the other day, and that had
stuck in DeAndre’s craw. Something stuck in your craw, meant it
pissed you off. DeAndre had picked that up from one of the books
he’d read. One of them
white
man’s
books
as
Juan would put it. DeAndre was under no misconceptions that his
brother hung with a bright bunch.

And so it was that DeAndre was returning home
from the take-out Chinese place two blocks down. It’d been a half
day at school, a staff development day for the teachers. The
Chinese place was literally a hole in the wall, no place to sit,
just a grate you slipped the menu you’d circled on under. You could
see and hear them frying up your food back there, then they passed
it out to you after you’d paid.

The quad was still jumping with activity: the
biggest speakers DeAndre had ever seen putting out deafening bass;
people dancing or standing around in groups, openly drinking and
smoking weed; Conyers’ boys—a collection of sullen looking young
men—standing around the perimeter, keeping watch; base heads
standing in place, swaying side to side. Busta Nutz had come home
to visit, was sharing the wealth.

Thing was, Busta would get to go home to
Manhattan or Bubble Hill or wherever he lived, and DeAndre would be
stuck here in the ghetto with his momma and Terry.

Luke was sitting by himself outside tower
two, a spliff in his hand, didn’t look right.

DeAndre tucked the paper bag under his arm,
hoping Luke wouldn’t notice him, but he did.

“Yo, shorty, come here.”

DeAndre couldn’t ignore him. He walked over
to Luke, thankful that Yuri and Marquis weren’t anywhere to be
seen. Especially Yuri.

“What up, Luke?” The older boy sitting there
with his weed, his chain hanging out of his shirt. DeAndre wondered
where a boy like Luke, lived in Moses like him, got the money for
that kind of chain.

“You seen Dodd?”

“Who Dodd?”

“Where Torrell?”

“He around here somewhere.” DeAndre gestured
to the party around them. “Think I seen him with Juan and Caprise
before.”

“Lemme ask you,” Luke was eyeing DeAndre’s
brown paper bag. “Who LeRoi Jones?”

“LeRoi Jones?” DeAndre Watkins was a
well-read thirteen year old. “He a poet. Amiri Baraka.”

“Hey Luke.” A little girl DeAndre recognized
from school walked up on them. “Where Yuri at?”

“He ain’t here.” Luke waved his hand at her,
shooing her away, but she continued to stand there.

“Well, where he at then?”

DeAndre recognized her from the seventh
grade, class under his.

“You see him here?” Luke sucked off his weed,
spoke through a lungful. “No? I say already he ain’t here.” He
exhaled. “Go on now, git.”

She walked away and DeAndre was thinking he’d
do the same, but Luke was still talking to him and he couldn’t just
leave. It’d be disrespectful and Luke might sic Yuri on him at a
later date. Then be all nonchalant about it when he came over to
hang with Terry. Luke a different guy then.

“What you reading there, shorty?”

DeAndre told him the name of the book and the
author, but if Luke had ever heard of either he made no
acknowledgement of it. Instead he started babbling, saying how he
knew DeAndre liked fantasy, was into those sword and sorcery
stories, that DeAndre wouldn’t believe what he’d seen earlier. Luke
puffing off his weed, talking to DeAndre about headless niggas
coming down apartment steps, DeAndre wondering what was in that
weed Luke was smoking, thinking maybe it was laced with a little
sherm or something.

Luke didn’t look good and Luke was talking to
him more than he ever had before, although it was crazy talk, Luke
rambling.

“You don’t believe a word I’m sayin,” Luke
stopped and looked out at DeAndre through a cloud of smoke. “Do
you?”

“Why you tellin’ me all this?”

Luke’s shoulders visibly dropped and he
lowered his head. DeAndre was thinking he should take that as his
cue to leave but he hesitated and it cost him. Luke looked up,
right at the bag under DeAndre’s arm, said “Give me your Chinese
food.”

DeAndre looked left and right. There were
people all around, but still no sign or Marquis or Yuri. No sign of
Terry or his boys either.

“Hand it over I said.”

DeAndre handed Luke the grease-stained paper
bag.

And that was it, Luke had nothing more to say
to him. DeAndre walked off, humiliated and hungry, silently cursing
himself and his luck.

Luke lost no time digging into the Chinese
food, spearing heaps of Lo Mein with the plastic fork that was in
the bag, shoveling it into his mouth. The weed and the stress had
left him famished. That little nigga DeAndre a punk, giving up his
Chinese like that. Luke thinking it was the law of the jungle out
here. If that lame little nigga was gonna trail the herd, a lion
was gonna fall on his gazelle ass sooner or later.

The shit Luke had seen in the last couple
days.

Crazy
.

If Torell said anything to him…the fuck was
Torrell going to say to him?

Luke’s head was down, his concentration on
the white container in his hands, when a pair of sneakers stepped
into his view. He remembered them from someplace. Addidas Harputs.
Had to go out San Francisco to get them, or order them from out
there. Luke raised his head, remembering where he knew them.

One of Busta’s men. Two others with him.

Busta’s man saying Busta wanted to talk to
him, right now. Luke put his munchies and the Chinese aside,
thinking Busta would listen to him, Busta would know what to do.
That punk Dodd was nowhere to be found, probably wouldn’t help him
if he could find him. But Busta, Busta been the one told him
good
job
, complimented him on the way Luke and Dodd
had walked into that lobby and deaded those fools. So what if
Khan’s shit was playing non-stop on all the radios now?

Luke followed the three men through the
crowd, some dirty looking motherfucker already taking over where
he’d left off with the Chinese. Luke paid it no mind, picturing
what was coming: Busta was going to send him back to that fat
bitch’s apartment, back with a few of the boys. Yuri was done—Luke
had seen the knife sticking out of his head, no nigga survived
something like that—but maybe Marquis was alright, maybe Marquis
was being held like captive or what not. Maybe Busta would send
these niggas right here back with Luke, tell them
go
with
him
, say to Luke
go
get
your
boy
.

Malik.

That was the man’s name with the Harputs.
Luke remembered it because the man might be on the thin side but
the look on his face, he looked like no joke.
Mal
meant bad
in Spanish. Little momacita from tower six Luke had hit raw that
one time taught him that.

They led Luke into building four, the one man
staying back at the door. The apartment lobby was quiet, the party
outside. Luke stepped into the rec room to find it empty. Where was
Busta?

“You like to talk, huh?”

Luke turned to Malik. “What you mean—”

“We seen you with your little friends
outside.” Malik tilted his head towards the man with him and Luke
thought he looked familiar now. Nigga’d been standing out there
when Luke had been hanging with Yuri and Marquis, the girls.
“Talkin’ ‘bout shit you shouldn’t be talkin’ bout.”

“Nah, dawg—”

“You want to talk like a little bitch,” Malik
reached out, taking Luke’s chain in his hand—Luke protested “It
ain’t like”—snapping the chain off his neck, throwing it on the
floor. “We’s treat you like a little bitch.”

“Wait! Wait! Busta know about this?”

“The fuck you think this about, bitch?”

The other man hit Luke, catching him
unawares. His head jerked back and his legs gave out under him.
Somehow he remembered to tuck his arms up against his sides, to
cover his face with his hands, bring his knees to his chest. They
were leaning down and punching him in the torso, Luke’s face
pressed close to the rec room’s linoleum floor.

One of them hit him in the side and Luke felt
it deep in his ribs. He looked out from behind his hands, saw the
sneaker drawing back as the man readied to kick him again.

Kick him with the sneakers had come all the
way from San Francisco.

He met Blind Melon in a park. The black man
who always wore sunglasses was seated in the middle of a green
wooden bench, waiting for him. Boone sat down on one end of the
bench without a word.

“Mojo.”

“How do you always do that?” Boone had copped
more meth off Damian and been smoking it every chance he got.

“Do what?”

“Always know it’s me?”

“You’re pretty hard to miss.” Blind Melon
grinned. “Haven’t heard from you for awhile.”

“Yeah, Blin’.” Boone tapped his palm on his
thigh.

“Been hearing plenty of other stuff
though.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Like what?” Boone shifted his weight on the
bench, restless.

“Like the vamps are getting ready to throw
down again.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Bunch of them got hit over in a warehouse in
the Bronx few weeks back. Another one got taken out Sunday,
literally dragged out of his nest. You wouldn’t know nothing about
any of that, would you?”

“Won’t lie to you, Blin’.” Boone slumped down
a bit on the bench, his arms crossed over his chest, then
immediately sat back up. “But I won’t talk ‘bout it neither.”

“Hope you don’t mind, but someone asked me
they could come and talk to you, I told them sure.”

“Depends on who the someone is.”

“Won’t lie to you, Mojo.” The old man threw
it right back at him. “Won’t talk ‘bout it either. They’ll be by
presently.”

“Damn, Blin’.” Tweaked, Boone had to laugh a
little laugh.

“What you need anyway?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Every time you come see me it’s usually
cause you want somethin’.”

“Fuckin’ forgive me for not knowing I was
supposed to pay the occasional social call.”

“You already flyin’ high on somebody else’s
dope, I can tell.” Among other things, Blind Melon was Boone’s
cocaine dealer. “So it ain’t that.”

“Nah, it ain’t that.” Boone told the man what
he needed and when the old man’s brow raised Boone asked him if
that was going to be a problem.

“No, not going to be a problem. But I’m a
need a few days on that.”

“Take your time.”

“Feelin’ like a reading?”

“You got your cards?”

“Mojo ask do I got my cards.” The old man
reached inside the mohair sweater he wore for a jacket and returned
with a deck of tarot cards.

“You want me to work the cards, you must have
a question you want answered.”

Boone thought about what he wanted to know.
“Where’s all this going?”

Blind shuffled the cards, let Boone cut them.
He proceeded to lay out ten cards between them, covering the first
card with the second, horizontally. The third through sixth he
placed around the first two, forming something like a cross. The
remaining four cards he laid one above the other.

“That’s you, on the bottom.” Boone looked at
the first card the old man had laid down.

“The Knight of Swords?”

“Represents war and wrath, destruction and
resistance. Your situation in the present. It means anything to
you, you’re fighting the good fight.”

“That’s good to know.” Boone didn’t feel good
about it. Rainford was manipulating him and he was letting Rainford
manipulate him.

“What’s with her—” the second card lying
across his Knight of Swords “—the Queen of Cups?”

“That’s what you’re facing right ahead. A
card’s facing you, Mojo, it means one thing. When it’s reversed, it
means something else.”

Boone looked at the horizontal card, thinking
about Kreshnik’s mother and all he’d heard about her. “So what’s
she mean?”

“She could be a good woman, fair and honest,
gonna do you some kind of service.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Or a perverted woman, one you can’t
trust.”

“Sounds more like it.”

“This is what you left behind.” Mojo tapped
the third card he had placed down, a little boy and a little girl,
the little boy holding a cup, smelling a flower in it. “This is in
your past, but it’s influencing you now.”